The word “Master Race” is clearly equivalent to terms which were used by Nazis and so are today’s far right wing and alt-rights.
There are other communities which created similar narratives, especially from the 4chan side, and I think the origin of “PC Master Race” comes from there.
In my experience, if you let a hate group co-opt a term or euphemism, it emboldens them in that usage.
For example, “Oh you did the OK symbol 👌? That’s a white supremacy symbol.” No it isn’t, in most contexts it means OK and in some cultures it represents a butthole.
So by using “master race” for a trivial and humorous concept that a person’s choice of OS makes them superior to others, it belittles its xenophobic usage. A person’s race or skin colour is (or should be) just as irrelevant as OS choice when it comes to their place in society.
Thank you!!! dilute the hate!
You have a very good argument right there, thank you for enriching this discussion!
The inflationary use of these words leads to generalization in common usage and removes taboos from them. Of course, one could argue that this loses its initial “power”. However, language changes very slowly and the terminology of the past remains. People will see you as people who see themselves above everyone else because of their operating system.
It also empowers Right Wing People and adopts narratives and disseminates ideas from that movement.
Small side info: In Germany, football clubs that would describe themselves as „master race“ would quickly end up on the list of enemies of the constitution, for the simple reason that it also attracts certain alt-rights, as I can see from this post.
The main problem with your argument is that this is not an e.g. racist insult, but a glorification. People are using faggot for themselves to fight the negativity of the word, but by using the word race, you will always recreate racism.
And while we’re on the subject of Nazi words, we can also adopt other terms: how about „Windows concentration camps“? (It’s funny, Isn’t it?)